


Biscuits

by LVE32



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Baker Street, 221B Ficlet, Baking, Boredom, Cookies, Cooking, Crushes, Cute, Domestic Life at 221B Baker Street, F/M, Feel-good, Funny, Happy, Play Fighting, Pre-Relationship, Secret Crush, Sexual Tension, Sherlock is bored, Short One Shot, Sweet Sherlock, Teasing, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wholesome, bubble fights, sarasm, short and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LVE32/pseuds/LVE32
Summary: Sherlock hasn't had a case for a while so tries baking, and Y/N starts to realise she might be in love with him.______________Just wrote this because lockdown is shit and I wanted somewhere fun and happy to escape to lol
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Reader
Kudos: 25





	Biscuits

DAY SEVEN WITHOUT A CASE and Y/N doesn’t know whether to be Concerned or Amused by her flatmate’s slow descent into madness.

It seems to vary from moment to moment.

For example, when she found him perched in a chair working his way through an entire Easter egg, she was Concerned. (Mainly because Easter was eight months ago).

Then, when he put his free time to creating tiny origami animals, Y/N was Amused. (A few paper birds are still dangling in suspended flight where she'd taped them to a couple of shelves and light fixtures).

When he attempted to do a handstand, she was both.

The weekend wasn’t so bad because Y/N was there to drag him somewhere every time boredom threatened to make an appearance. He complied happily, and—on Saturday—followed her around a few shops in fairly good humour, aside from the occasional jab at this or that. On Sunday they circled the park and went to a restaurant in the evening. This went okay, but Sherlock _did_ tell a waitress that the busboy was cheating on her with the manager, and the evening ended with at least two people in tears.

It’s the weekdays that are troublesome because Y/N is at work for at least five hours. She knows Sherlock won’t do anything _bad_ while she’s gone, he might just do something _mad_. Like that time there was The Fire.

Although, credit to him, there has only been _one_ fire, that’s why they call it _The_ Fire. Usually, Y/N just comes home to an odd scene she wishes she could have witnessed the origin of.

Like yesterday, when Sherlock tried knitting. Y/N had kicked off her shoes and turned around to find her landlord patiently walking Sherlock through a pearl stitch. He gave it an admirable three hours, continuing to struggle his way through a narrow, wonky-looking scarf long after Mrs Hudson had given up tutoring him. Well, trying to tutor him. He has slender, nimble fingers but that doesn’t seem to help. If anything, they just got in the way, impatient and too quick for their own good; like a spider trying to spin a web with ten legs rather than eight. It was the wool’s fault; obviously. That’s what he insisted indignantly when Y/N examined what he had produced and wouldn’t stop cackling.

The day before that, Y/N introduced him to online games and came home to find him alarmingly obsessed with a virtual farm. The evening ended with Y/N confiscating his laptop.

The day before _that_ , Y/N arrived back at the flat to find Mrs Hudson trying to get Sherlock into yoga. She may have succeeded earlier in the afternoon, but by the time Y/N got there he’d either given up or declared it ‘stupid’. Their landlord had spread out a few foamy mats in the centre of the living room, and propped her iPad up on the mantel. A blonde white woman on the screen was demonstrating ‘The King Pigeon’—which Mrs Hudson was absolutely nailing. Sherlock wasn't even trying, just sitting slumped and cross-legged on a pink mat, looking moody. Apparently he 'is as flexible as a wooden spoon’.

Today, Y/N was home later than usual because Sherlock had asked her to pick up an assortment of things on her way. Y/N could only guess they were for either baked goods or a really tasty kind of bomb. She stopped off at their faithful little Co-Op after work to fetch them, then hurried to 221B to see what strange scene awaited her.

...

“I got what you asked for. They didn’t have chocolate chips so I just bought a bar you could break up.” Y/N peeled off her shoes and kicked them to the back of the rack, her feet glad to be rid of them.

The scene awaiting her turned out to be not very strange at all; she found Sherlock crouched by the hearth, impassively feeding the fire within chips of kindling and balls of scrap paper. He lit up when he saw Y/N, and watched her cross the room to flop down at his side. “Thank you.”

“Here, I got you this, too.” Y/N fished about her Bag For Life until her hand closed on the familiar shape of a Cadbury’s Cream Egg, and tossed it to her flatmate. He dropped the splinter of pine he’d been watching the fire mouth at, a smile breaking his face in two.

“Thank you,” he said again, and immediately began picking at the foil. “How was work?”

“It was meh. How was…whatever you’ve been doing here?” Her eyes combed the flat quickly, and found nothing out of place. Although, it is entirely possible he's ruined some other part of it she hasn’t been to yet, like one of their bedrooms or the bathroom, or—for some reason—the little hallway leading to Y/N’s half of the apartment.

Sherlock used his teeth to gently lever open the two halves of his Cream Egg, and watched the goo inside pool on the lower shell as he eased them apart. “Mycroft came over for tea at noon and tried to get me to play chess—again—but I couldn’t remember what all the pieces do. I kept calling the knights ‘horses’ and he stormed off.” A smirk was twitching the corner of his lip as he lapped up some of his Cream Egg’s innards with his pink tongue.

“So what’s all this for?” Y/N nudged the bag by her foot with a sock-covered toe.

“I’m going to try baking,” Sherlock dropped the remaining half of his chocolate—licked clean—in his mouth and stood with a swift unfurling of limbs, plucking the bag up with him.

Y/N followed him as he stalked to the kitchen and started hunting around for various things. She’d never seen him attempt anything more complex than spaghetti bolognese, now that she thinks about it; if he wants good food he’ll either go out and find some or summon it to the flat. Surely, though, he must have baked as a boy? A mental image of Mrs Holmes scolding a miniature Sherlock for dunking his hands in the flour slipped before Y/N’s mind’s eye and she had to bite her lip. “What are you baking?”

“I thought I’d start with biscuits and see how it goes.”

Easy enough, Y/N shrugged. All the same: “Can I watch?”

Probably remembering how she’d had to wipe away tears at the sight of his sorry excuse for a scarf: “Don’t you have something better to do?”

“Something better than watching you destroy the flat over some biscuits? No.”

Sherlock’s head was deep in a cupboard as he hunted for the scales, but Y/N knew he was glowering. “I’m not going to destroy anything; they’re biscuits, how difficult could they be?”

“When you die, that’s what I’m going to tell the newspapers your last words were.”

“Shut up.” He’d emerged from the cupboard now, a stained set of weighing scales in one hand. They were one of those old type ones with a wide dish sat atop a squat, clock-looking thing. He tested it a few times; pushing the dish down to make sure the hand swung around then settled back on the big, bold ZERO.

Y/N watched as he removed the ingredients from the bag, and a few things from other shelves and cabinets.

After he’d washed his hands, he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and Y/N whistled teasingly, which made his cheekbones go unexpectedly pink.

When Sherlock had apparently gotten himself settled, he stood his phone against the toaster, _BBC Good Food_ already open on the screen.

Y/N hoisted herself onto the kitchen table and made herself comfortable. “It’s like watching Jamie Oliver behind the scenes.”

“Piss off.”

“Make that Gordon Ramsey.”

Sherlock didn’t reply, just started spooning flour onto the scales, little sprinklings falling down onto the countertop because he’d heaped the spoon too high.

“What do you think you’ll try next?” Y/N asked. “Embroidery? Scrapbooking? Dancing?”

“I know you’re making fun of me, but I’m actually very good at two of those.”

Intrigued: “Which ones?” Y/N wished she'd hadn't eaten her own treat on the way home from Co-Op. It would have been nice to have something to nibble on.

Sherlock is going the other way now; spooning the flour back into the bag rather than into the dish. “Shush, I’m trying to do maths.”

“Yes, it’s complicated watching an arrow point to ‘two hundred’, isn’t it?”

He turned to her, his mouth set in a firm line.

It made something in Y/N’s stomach go all tingly.

“Are you going to do something useful? Or are you just going to sit there making sarcastic comments?”

She fractionally inclined her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “Well, that’s what you usually do.”

Sherlock’s own shoulders rose and fell in a sigh rather than a shrug as he turned back to his flour-stained work surface. “For your information, I’m making four-thirds of the amount in the recipe, so I can’t just _find the two-hundred._ I need to find two-hundred-and-sixty-six.”

“My apologies.”

“Thank you. Could you pass me the butter?”

Y/N hopped off the table, fetched a stick from the fridge and pressed it into Sherlock’s waiting hand. “Need anything else, Gordon?”

“Yes, actually, could you turn the chocolate bar into chips?”

“Only if I get to nibble.”

“One nibble.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“Two and a half, that’s my final offer.”

With a huff, Sherlock conceded, and Y/N fished the chocolate bar out of the bag. She figured the best way would be to break it into pieces then chop those up with a knife.

She was midway through doing this—-taking the occasional break to pop a shard in her mouth—when she realised Sherlock was…what was he doing?

He was fishing eggshells out of his mixing bowl.

“You can dissect a human eyeball but you can’t crack an egg?”

“I can crack an egg,” he insisted, his voice low with concentration. Only a few sharp points of shell had worked their way into the bowl, but they were proving difficult to nip between finger and thumb.

Y/N used his distraction to slip another chunk of chocolate into her mouth. “Not very well, clearly.”

Sherlock straightened up. His brow is all furrowed and frowny, eyes shining with challenge. He's got his knuckles pressing into his hips so he doesn't mess up his pristine dress trousers with his eggy hands, shoulders all squared and nettled. 

Y/N sometimes wonders why she's metaphorically poking at him, but she's remembering now. She likes his frowny face. There's something about it.

“Well, you do it, if you think it's so easy.” He handed her the egg he’d been about to break to Y/N and she took it, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Fine. Move over Gordon.”

“Stop it.”

Y/N ignored him and settled the egg neatly in one palm. With one tap, she cracked it and let the contents spill forth and pool—free of shell—in the bottom of the bowl. She felt Sherlock’s eyes still on her hand.

“How'd you do that?” He asked, all irritation replaced with what could only be described as wonder.

It took her a second to figure out whether he was messing with her. “…Do you want me to show you?”

Sherlock took the last egg and clumsily pushed it into his palm the way he’d seen Y/N do it. Well, close enough to the way he'd seen Y/N do it.

“These fingers need to push it into your hand,” Y/N explained, gesturing vaguely.

Sherlock held out his hand, inviting her to physically instruct him, and—for some reason blushing—Y/N arranged his ring and little finger at the large end of the egg, then guided his thumb to the pointed end. His hand was soft and even paler than usual from the flour.

“Just push with your thumb when you’ve cracked it.”

The egg looked so small swamped by his hand. Tentatively, Sherlock knocked it against the side of the bowl. He seemed to not know his own strength, however, because the egg splintered chaotically and caved in under the pad of his thumb as he tried to do as Y/N said. The yolk sloshed out, prickly with shell.

Y/N cackled. “A for effort.”

“F for execution,” Sherlock added, his own lips curved into a self-conscious smile. It was so uncharacteristically soft Y/N actually tried to stifle her giggles.

“No, no, you got it _in_ the bowl, that’s got to be at least a C.”

He made a single syllabled hum in his throat and bent to, once again, pluck out the shells.

“Here, I’ll do that. You move onto the next thing.” Y/N gave him a sympathetic pat on the back and gestured at the bowl of eggs.

He handed it over gratefully. “For the record, I’m not completely useless; I just haven’t done this since I was eleven.”

“Of course.”

“No one needs to know how to bake any more; we have United Biscuits.”

Lifting herself back onto the table, Y/N began scooping out rocky little flecks of brown from the eggs with the knife she’d chopped the chocolate with. “Exactly.”

“And McVities. And Mrs Hudson.”

“The holy trinity.”

Sherlock shot her another look. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

He decided not to dignify that with a response, and turned back to the task at hand, which was creaming the butter and sugar.

Y/N’s taste buds pricked as the scent of buttercream swamped the kitchen. Hopefully: “How about we swap?" She held out the eggs. "I'll do that, you go back to this.”

The answer she got was flat: “No."

“Why not?”

Sherlock turned to her, propping himself up against the counter. He pressed the wedge of butter into the sugar crystals collected at the side of the bowl with a satisfying gritty sort of sound. “Because you’ll eat half of it.”

“Mrs Hudson exaggerates; it wasn't a _whole_ half. And that was ages ago."

He simply raised an eyebrow at her.

"You’re really not going to let that go, are you?”

"Those shortbreads were for _both_ of us."

“Can I just have a taste?”

He jabbed it a few times with the wooden spoon, and it still crunched grittily with sugar. “It’s not even smooth yet.”

“I’m not picky."

There was a few minutes of kind of staring each other down—besides the moments when Y/N would dip her head back to her bowl of eggs to fish for more shells. Sherlock swapped which arm he was mixing with a few times, then, seemingly satisfied with his creation's consistency, scooped some up with one finger and gave it an experimental lick.

“Did you wash your hands after touching the egg?” Y/N asked, trying to focus on something other than his mouth as he lapped up the buttercream. A man’s lips have no right being that delectable. No right at all.

“I wiped them on a paper towel.”

Y/N’s mouth twitched. “Let's hope you don’t get salmonella.”

“I won’t get salmonella,” he fought back, reloading his finger with sugary cream and popping it in his stupid pretty mouth.

“You might do, you know how bacteria works, right? Didn’t you graduate in chemistry?”

“That’s _biology_.” But he held out the bowl for Y/N all the same.

She scooped up a generous globule of mixture and hummed at the taste.

Sherlock was staring at her.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

Y/N narrowed his eyes at him like he was a puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out, and he quickly turned back to the counter.

…

When all the ingredients were mixed up and had been thoroughly beaten about their bowl, Sherlock lined a few baking trays with greaseproof paper and began dividing the batter into a series of wonky circles.

“I think this one is the runt of the litter,” Y/N said, pointing to a weeby little dollop of goo squashed in-between its much larger brothers and sisters. Then she caught sight of one even _smaller_ and _runtier_. It was the one made entirely from mixture Sherlock had scraped off the sides of the bowl. “And I think this one should be taken to a vet.”

He snatched the tray away defensively and jammed it into the oven with the rest. “They’ll look better when they’re baked, give them a chance.”

“I'm not sure, it might be more humane to just put them down." She was joking, of course, and Sherlock elected to ignore it.

He ran a paper towel under the tap and started wiping down the countertop.

Despite the flour and littering of eggshells, he'd not completely covered everything as Y/N feared he might. She'd half expected him to get bored halfway through and start testing the ingredients to see which ones burn fastest.

Y/N felt a light flick of something over the back of her head. "What was that? If that was that dish rag covered in flour and eggs---"

“Could you make yourself useful?” Sherlock cut her off before she could complete that threat---which is probably for the best seeing as she doesn't know what she'd do.

"I am useful."

"Then make yourself even more _usefuller_. If you help me tidy up I'll let you have a biscuit when they're done."

Y/N gaped at him. "You weren't planning on giving me one?" 

He flashed her a smirk as he turned away and Y/N wished _she_ had a dishcloth to hit him with. 

Reluctantly, Y/N dumped the dirty cutlery in the sink and ran the tap, squeezing some fairy liquid into the running water. It foamed immediately, almost overflowing with swelled plumes of frothy bubbles. 

"Sherlock?" 

"Hm?" He turned to her, like an idiot, and she pressed a handful of it straight into his face. 

She cackled, half from fear of what he'd do next, and half from childish joy. Even though she couldn't see his mouth she knew it to be a line. 

Sherlock gave Y/N a good few seconds of laughter before scraping a hand down his face and wiping the residue onto his shirt. The purple silk blossomed with deep blackcurrant bruises and he watched them spread expressionlessly. A few bubbles still clung to his right eyebrow. "That was very childish," he stated flatly. 

Y/N monitored him, waiting, wondering if he'd strike back but he didn't. Slightly disappointed, she turned back to the counter and began plucking up the eggshells. 

She'd just nudged the bin shut with her foot when she felt something pluck the back of her t-shirt. It tugged it away from her neck and then a handful of bubbles were rammed into the gap. Y/N yelped, the cool froth dribbling down her spine line an enormous slug. "You _bastard_ \---"

Sherlock was grinning at her when she turned around, all teeth and crinkly eyes. 

Y/N didn't hesitate to reload her palm from the sink. 

As he tried to back away, she plucked the collar of Sherlock's shirt, using the top two open buttons to stuff the bubbles down the front, to which he made a strangled shouting noise and tried to shove her off. 

...

Thankfully, they ran out of places to soak before they ran out of washing up liquid. Their fight ended with both of them gasping between giggles for some sort of truce. 

"I think I won that," Y/N stated, combing Sherlock's sodden attire with her eyes. Most of it was dripping and clinging limply to his svelte body---apart from his hair. He'd protected that admirably. 

Y/N wasn't looking at his hair, though. 

Before now she'd never really noticed how much he'd filled out since she's been living with him. She could have sworn his shoulders are broader, his chest fuller. His stomach doesn't sink in anymore. His whole soaking wet body is dented with little rises and falls of muscle. 

Y/N swallowed heavily and tried to think of something else. 

"Bollocks you did," Sherlock snapped back, his mouth still curling at one side with a grin. "You look like you've been standing under a waterfall." 

Self consciously, Y/N crossed her arms over her chest. If she can see those two clean-cut lines below his belly snaking into his trousers, he can probably see just as much of her. Which she doesn't mind---it's just that the thought makes her cheeks go a stupid colour that he's bound to notice. "But I'm smaller than you, so technically I covered more surface area---"

This got her a snort and they started laughing again. 

It dwindled away slowly, and then Sherlock took a few steps forward until Y/N was face to face with his shirt buttons. He used a finger to peel her rat-tailed hair out her eyes and sweep it behind her ear. 

Y/N's water-clogged clothes were starting to cool and Y/N felt a shiver skitter up her spine. 

"You should go get changed," he said gently. 

…

Sherlock was right, the biscuits did look better once they’d backed; soft disks of golden dough with thick pools of chocolate oozing from craters where the oversized chunks had been. Waiting for them to cool was like some unorthodox form of torture, but—when they had finally cooled—they took them to eat by the fire that was still crackling away to itself in the hearth.

“These are actually really good,” Y/N complimented after her first bite, the biscuit melting pleasantly on her tongue, still warm and malleable from the oven. She felt Sherlock give her a small shove.

“You sound surprised. I am a man of immense mental aptitude; I think I can tackle a simple biscuit recipe.” His lips were curled into a smile, though, his tone light rather than defensive.

Y/N tried to keep her mouth respectfully closed as she laughed. When it pittered out, she asked: “So, seriously, what are you going to try tomorrow; if a case doesn’t come through?”

Sherlock took another biscuit from the plate and collected up a few crumbs with the pad of one finger. “I’m not sure. I think I’ll wait for you to come home before I try anything new, though.”

“Because you need supervision?” Y/N prodded, and he gave her another little shove.

“Yeah, that’s why," he answered quietly.

There was a few moments of silence, besides the fire chomping away at its kindling. It warmed Y/N and Sherlock's still slightly chilly skin, their fresh clothes crisp and starchy. Sherlock let Y/N take another cookie, even though she hadn't really helped him to clean up (in fact, she'd actually made more mess). He took another for himself, seemingly content, and Y/N watched him while he wasn't looking, his eyes on the flames mouthing at a wedge of coal. 

“By the way," she pointed out, smiling, "you have flour in your hair.” 

It’s been there for a while but she’s been putting off telling him because it looks…something. Cute? Can Sherlock Holmes be cute? Maybe it’s just funny, his long, loose curls peppered with white, like some sort of crazy scientist. Or maybe it looks like frost; like he’s been snowed on with the most delicate flakes, just a gentle dusting, the fuzzy whiteness contrasting with the smooth chocolatey brown—

"Where?" He asked, turning to her. 

His eyes are sometimes startling, such a strange colour, so many thoughts, and this is one of those times. But this time its 'so much pupil' rather than 'so much colour'; wells of inky black, little reflections of the hearth flickering away like a sun. 

Y/N found her voice catching in her throat and had to clear it before she could reply. "There." She gestured, and he shuffled closer to her. 

"Can you get it?" 

Glad for the low light so he couldn't see her cheeks heat, Y/N nodded and reached out with one hand. She needed the other to steady herself, and kept it pressed to the worn old carpet like an anchor. 

His hair is soft. That's all it is, that's all Y/N could think of to describe it as she watched her hand submerge itself in his curls. _Soft_.

With fascination, she felt the silky coils leaping free of her hand as soon as it passed over them. Sherlock tipped his head into her palm, pushing into it so she could fluff them, the flour rising in a puffy cloud. 

It was hard to pull away, and when she did his curls weren’t even curls anymore; just frizz, sticking up about his head, lit by the fire behind him like a dark halo.

“What?” He asked, returning Y/N’s earlier question when she’d caught _him_ gaping at _her_. Something was ghosting his mouth. It might have been a smile. 

Y/N had to find her voice before she could use it. “What do you mean, ‘what?’”


End file.
